‘It can get worse’: The bite that burns like fire and killed a football hero

No one wants to experience the gut-wrenching wait to find out how their child will react to their first bite by a potentially deadly fire ant.

That’s the message from Texan entomologist Robert Puckett, who is visiting Australia to share the knowledge of US experts, who have been managing an invasion of fire ants for a century.

Robert Puckett specialises in outreach programs to communities to build trust when governments access people’s property to lay baits and eradicate the ants.Credit: James Brickwood.

“Any parent in my state would be more than happy to share with you the memory of the first time their child stepped on a mound of red imported fire ants and was stung up,” said Puckett, associate professor at Texas A&M University, who specialises in outreach programs to communities to build trust when governments access people’s property to lay baits and eradicate the ants.

“You can imagine how agonising that is for a parent, plus you have the concern of wondering whether your child is overly sensitive to their stings.”

The National Allergy Centre of Excellence, Australia’s peak allergy research body, estimates that fire ants sting one-third of people who live in areas where they have established colonies each year.

It said that if a nationwide infestation were to occur, up to 650,000 people would seek medical attention for bites each year, including up to 175,000 people for allergic reactions such as hives, welts and swelling that in severe cases could be fatal.

The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy has said fire ants were three times more likely than bees to cause anaphylaxis – a life-threatening allergic reaction. In 2021, there were 927 hospital visits due to bee stings and 12 deaths from anaphylaxis from bee and wasp stings.

In most cases, fire ant bites cause a burning sensation lasting for about an hour, which can create blisters and pustules.

The Queensland outbreak is already forcing closures of sports fields and beaches where colonies have cropped up, but Puckett said it could get worse.

Texan schools have an integrated pest manager, whose primary job is to remove fire ant nests as they pop up.

“We lost a high school football athlete a few years back,” Puckett said. “He and a teammate tackled into a colony that had been missed, that had not been treated, and one of the boys made it – the other did not.”

Fire ants entered the US from South America in the 1930s, and eradication efforts failed. They have colonised about 20 per cent of the US.

“The ants have expanded to all the territory that will support them in the United States, which really is just the southern and southeastern states and up the eastern seaboard and then out in California and some of the states out west,” Puckett said.

“That’s where they’re going to stop. But for you guys in Australia, they could continue to expand.”

About 99 per cent of Australia is suitable habitat, and there have been warnings the ants could easily spread to other areas.

Fire ants first arrived in Australia in 2001 via international shipping in Brisbane. Since then, colonies have been found and eradicated in Sydney, Gladstone and Fremantle. Ants were found in transported agricultural material last year in northern NSW, Hobart and Melbourne.

Fire ants can be collected when harvesting mulch for gardens and feed for livestock. The ants found in northern NSW last year were probably transported in landscape materials.

The original Brisbane incursion is ongoing and has spread across a vast area of south-east Queensland. The National Fire Ant Eradication Program is currently conducting the world’s biggest insect eradication program.

A giant ring has been formed around Brisbane and the Gold Coast, where eradication workers painstakingly lay baits and insecticide. It takes up to two years and six treatments to eradicate a colony.

Using the coastline as a border, the ring around Brisbane will be closed over time in a pincer movement and hopefully eradicate the ants by the early 2030s. Meanwhile, suburbs in the middle of the ring are the “suppression zone”, where residents are expected to control nests until the eradication teams arrive.

Fire ant nests in Logan, Queensland, in June 2024. Credit: Stuart Webber.

Puckett travelled to Australia as a guest of the Invasive Species Council, which is warning that the eradication program – which cost $593 million between 2023 and 2027 – needs more funds to succeed.

The council’s fire ant expert, Reece Pianta, said suppression activity within greater Brisbane must be ramped up to reduce the fire ant population and decrease the chances that ants will break out to other areas of the country.

The infestation in this zone is significant, with the National Eradication Program receiving 40,000 reports of suspected ant sightings between July 2023 and June this year.

Get to the heart of what’s happening with climate change and the environment. Sign up for our fortnightly Environment newsletter.